I took a long time reading this book. I didn't want to know what would happen next because I expected it to be a gut punch. The Cold Millions is exceedingly powerful and beautiful in its terrifyingly accurate portrayal of the brutal West, weather notwithstanding. Perhaps we need a new genre of historical fiction...one that encompasses the raw emotion of The Good Lord Bird, the expanses of Barkskins and The Revenant, and the unbridled passions of men as in The Cold Millions and Phil Klay's Missionaries. Books labeled "Beware" You will hate yourself and your country while reading". But thank you for the unions, the philanthropists, the visionaries, the kind ones. We need to know the history of all.

I wanted to like this book more than I did, and yet it’s a book that I won’t soon forget. I don’t think it was the book, I think it was me and the space I’m in, the space our country is in and the helplessness I feel as I look on.

And that brings me back to the point of the book. It begins in 1910 Spokane Washington where IWW organizers called Wobblies are trying to organize unions and improve working conditions for the miners. The resistance to them is illegal, immoral and crushing. Life is hard and there is no such thing as the safety net of social justice.

The main characters are Gig and Rye Dolan, orphaned and without resources other than their wits. Gig is committed to the labor movement and 16-year-old Rye who looks up to his big brother wants to be a part of it too. Enter Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a suffragette and tireless union organizer. I think Ursula the Great would have been better served if she had been saved for a book of her own. That was just one story line too many for me.

The book is well researched and the conditions in the book are based on conditions in Spokane at that time. The second half is where the characters were fleshed out and that’s when the book came alive for me. Spoiler alert, the author brings in another parallel, the civil rights movement in the Deep South in 1965 which is a fitting way to close this tale. Absolutely appropriate for book club fodder.

A captivating, character-driven look at labor relations and early workers rights activism at the dawn of the 20th century.

This book isn’t nearly as fun or adventurous as the synopsis makes it sound, but it’s endearing and interesting and unfortunately far more poignant to the current political climate than is ideal. I’m not a huge fan of unions and labor issues as a topic for fiction despite being sympathetic to their causes, but at the moment the subject does feel alarmingly relevant given the way workers have been treated in recent years.

To that end, while the cause is good, it feels a bit overused in the book, a lot of pounding the same point in over and over. Gurley Flynn (who was decidedly not my favorite character in this) hammered that point home so repetitively that I started skimming her dialogue. Realistically, this would have been exactly how her position as an agitator would have worked. But in a novel, it started to feel droning rather early in the story.

At the other end of the spectrum is Rye, a deeply lovable protagonist who is very easy to root for. His perspectives are one of the best parts of the book.

I was a bit disappointed by the lack of atmosphere in the book after being so delighted by the author’s use of setting in Beautiful Ruins, but the same subtle humor is present, and it’s one of the best things about the story. I laughed out loud when Rye proudly says (after being complimented on his new ermine gloves): Thanks, they’re weasel.”

I would have loved more of Ursula the Great and less (a LOT less) of Gurley Flynn, and while this is a solid story, it doesn’t really compare to Beautiful Ruins. Still, it’s a heartwarming read in a lot of ways, and boasts a protagonist who is impossible not to love.

I knew Jess Walter from his book Beautiful Ruins which I loved, and I knew he was from Spokane, so I was excited to read his historical fiction novel set in PNW. After what I felt was a very slow start, I almost gave up. The characters and subject matter just didn't grab me despite the setting. I am SO glad I kept reading. At about the 25% mark, I was totally hooked.

With a few real-life characters the labor/socialist movement in the early 20th century, Walter creates a story that resonates with the issues of today. Focusing on two brothers trying to eke out a living, a millionaire mining magnate, a young female firebrand, and a variety of others Walter brings us into the early days of the movement with marches, arrests, challenges to free speech, and some unsavory characters who are trying to keep workers from organizing. In Ri (Ryan), Walter has created a young man worthy of our empathy who gets caught up in all of it. Once the stage is set, this is a book that's difficult to put down. It's action packed with several surprising moments. This would be a great "book club" read -- a good story with LOTS to discuss.

A deeply satisfying tale of brotherhood, adventure, politics, organizing and manhood. The women weren't bad, just a little less nuanced, with the near exception of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a real-life organizer who gave everybody hell, even while pregnant. Much of what is memorable in terms of characterization here is Ryan Dolan (known as Rye) who acts as the conscience of the novel in spite of the mishaps and misfortunes of his brother, Gig. The Cold Millions is also an interesting historical look at the Pacific Northwest, which seems to have never quite cured its racial/ethnic intolerance.

This rollicking novel set in the Northwest revives one of the most interesting historical eras I know -- that of early labor strife, particularly the Free Speech demonstrations staged by the One Big Union, the IWW, the romantically infamous Wobblies.

The main characters are two brothers, Rye and Gig, just trying to keep themselves fed by working odd labor jobs, usually in mining or timber. Gig is the older brother, smart, reckless, hard-drinking, and with an eye for the ladies and for trouble. His younger brother Rye is the more responsible one, even at the age of 16.

Fate has placed them in Spokane in days when job wholesalers charged men looking for work to apply for a job. Both the mining and timber barons were cutthroat, and the union men met force with force. This was a time of bombings, sabotage, and infiltration by the Pinkertons with the aim of buckling the unions.

Some historical figures are threaded into the story, notably Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the Rebel Girl, who started organizing and agitating as a teenager.

As the story begins, the historically accurate Free Speech movement by the Wobblies has resulted in hundreds of them being thrown into jail. This is an action-packed and fast-moving story told through the eyes of the two brothers. I found this to be an altogether captivating read. The brutality and hardscrabble reality feels truthfully presented. Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

May be my favorite read of the year so far. A beautiful fictionalization of history. Really brings the plight and characters to life. The reader is transported into the life of these characters with ease, almost unsettlingly so.

Made me bust out some old Pete Seeger and Utah Phillips records.

Yes, I assigned a freelance writer to interview Mr. Walter for a piece that ran in our 11 newspapers and websites of the Southern California News Group. The story is scheduled to run online 10/31.

Jess Walter seems to pick a new genre with each new novel. This time he's written a historical fiction involving Spokane, Washington and the early days of the rise of labor unions. While using the beginning as his premise, he more than makes clear that workers still need and deserve protection from those who would take advantage of us. This isn't a topic that generally interests me, but this is a page-turner and a great read. His characters are always human, surprising and compelling. I really cared what happened to them. Highly recommended for anyone who loves an amazing read.

Like the author's other literary masterpiece, Beautiful Ruins, this book is hard to put down until you read it all! I loved the premise of two brothers learning about the complexities of the world. The author's writing kept me engaged.

This is a character driven book which pulls you directly into their lives.

Rye Nolan is the main focus, a young teenager who goes on the hobo road after his parents and other siblings died. He finds his brother Gig (Gregory) and they tramp around until settling for a while in Spokane, WA sleeping on the porch of an old Italian woman, who promised they could buy her backyard orchard land to build their own house. Gig meanwhile is taken up by the IWW (International Workers of the World) and their cause for better pay and working conditions for workers, especially the miners. Rye isn’t sure what to believe, but gets pulled into the action when the police chase and attack them after a drunken night that ended sleeping on a baseball field, and end up in an overstuffed jail. And that is the beginning, as there is so much more to the book.

We get a diverse cast of characters and the point of view shifts to several of these, which was done well. The way Walter writes these individual people you get immersed in their own story, understand their motivations. This isn’t done with all of the main characters, but enough to give us a more rounded view of this brief moment in time.

It’s an interesting fictionalized version of the real events that happened around the free speech movement and a brief time of the IWW in the beginning of the 20th century.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Beautiful writing as always. There are no bad things i can say about this gem. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher!

Nothing can touch my love for and enchantment by #beautifulruins but #thecoldmillions charmed me right out of the blue with all the quirky side characters and subplots. I had no idea I was interested in this history and way of life, but I was. Couldn’t put it down. #netgalley

This is historical fiction at its best. Many of the characters were actual people experiencing actual events that are dramatized in this novel. The main female character led such an amazing life that her story would make this book worth reading just for that. But there is so much more. I didn't find any of the characters stereotyped though it would have been an easy trap to fall into when writing of the beginnings of union organizing in the early 1900s in Spokane, Seattle, Missoula, and Butte. Great prose and a really great novel...possibly Jess Walter's best so far.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for the ARC to read and review.

To me, not only was this a book about the free speech riots involving the Wobblies (International Workers of the World), it also is a parallel to events today. Combining fictional characters with read characters. Although I was a big confused in the beginning chapters with introduction to the fictional characters, the storyline soon fell into place as Rye and Gig Dolan, orphans forced into the lives of tramps and their involvement in the IWW movement. It’s a novel filled with empathy for men who can’t get ahead and are constantly outmaneuvered by men with money. Jess Walters shows, again, his versatility in writing fiction.

My review can be found at Bookbrowse.com:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr267200

Jess Walter's The Cold Millions centers around 16-year-old Rye Dolan and his 23-year-old brother Gig. The pair have spent months tooling around the western United States, working odd jobs and hopping rails as it suits them. As the book opens, they've landed in Spokane, Washington in 1909 just as the nascent union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (see Beyond the Book), is poised to battle the town's wealthy business owners and corrupt police force over free speech issues. The idealistic Gig is drawn into the conflict, pulling the idolizing Rye right along with him into the fracas, setting each on a path that will forever impact their lives and their relationship.

The author has chosen a very specific time, place and event for his novel: it is based on the Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909, which resulted in the incarceration of hundreds of activists and workers and unfolded much as Walter outlines in the book. Many of the characters, too, have real-life counterparts, such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a pregnant 19-year-old union organizer from New Hampshire, and Spokane Police Chief John Sullivan, among others. Beyond just the events, though, the author's attention to historical detail is impressive, truly transporting readers to an earlier era. Even his prose seems appropriate for the time period; its cadence may be challenging to get into at first, but once one adjusts, the writing style enhances the book's feel of being set in a Western city at the turn of the century.

Spokane felt like the intersection of Frontier and Civilized, the final gasp of a thing before it turned into something else – the Last Rush Town, Gig called it, for the silver rushes in the foothills, but also the rush of railroad and bank, school and merchant, brick, stone, and steel, old-growth timber turned to pillared houses, hammers popping nonstop against the wild, a mad rush to log and pave the whole world.

Most of the story is told in the third person from Rye's viewpoint, with an occasional first-person chapter narrated by one of the other characters. Unlike many novels where the narrative voice changes from chapter to chapter, here the first-person sections make up just a small percentage of the novel and seem more like a break in the story than just a shift in perspective. The main characters each get one or two of these interludes, and in it they "break the fourth wall," so to speak, directly addressing their story to an unknown audience. It's a different spin on this technique, but one I thoroughly enjoyed.

Rye is clearly the heart and soul of the book; at one point he remarks that he feels like he's being carried along by the tide of history without being able to impact it, and indeed he's not wrong. One of the things that makes the book brilliant, though, is how the teenager learns to adapt to the events swirling around him, maturing into a man with his own thoughts and will.

In addition to Rye, The Cold Millions is rife with three-dimensional characters, and whether they're historically based or not, they come across as real. Readers could spend a lot of time googling them (as I admit I did), but it's a distracting exercise; in the acknowledgments, the author urges readers to "treat even the historical figures as fictional characters," and it seems like that's the best approach to take. In spite of there being a relatively large cast, each character is so well-drawn that I had no problem keeping track of who was who and delighting in each one's quirks.

Given publishing timelines, Walter certainly began writing this novel well before 2020's protests, which have sparked debate about citizens' rights under the First Amendment. Despite the events on which it is based taking place a century ago, I found the plot extremely relevant to today's concerns.

Historical fiction doesn't get any better than this; its fast pace, stellar writing and compelling characters make The Cold Millions a winner, and I highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in this period of American history. Walter's fans will certainly find much to love about the book, and it will likely attract him many new followers as well.

Historical fiction novel centered on Spokane, WA in the early 1900's. The Wobblies (members of the Industrial Workers of the World) are trying to organize and real life activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn really gets things stirred up. This novel reminded me a lot of Steinbeck--both in the subject matter and the misfit main characters that give this story so much heart. Very good read!

As the labor movement grew and spread through Spokane, Washington in the early 1900's, this novels storyline takes the reader into the midst of it through two orphaned brothers's lives as they navigate hobo villages, work stoppages, fund raising and police raids. Assisted, and sometimes hindered by all manner of personalities, the action sees one brother incarcerated while the other allies himself with an actress, a robber baron, a detective and a young, female organizer to hopefully arrange his brother's release. Well written and researched, a deep read set in an interesting era. Highly recommend.

The characters are so vividly drawn you can't help but root for the plight of the Dolan brothers and the vagabonds that surround them. The fight for workers' rights resonates just as much now as it did then and Jess Walters' is a master making this known.